Christmas Gift Guide 2021 : Best Toys For 4-5 Year Olds
Babipur Christmas Gift Guides
If you’re looking for natural wooden toys and gifts for babies, toddlers and children, you have come to the right place! We specialise in natural toys for kids, only stocking toys that are safe and made from natural wood and natural rubber, and finished with water safe based paints or natural plant based oils. In this guide you’ll find our recommendations for the best toys for 4-5 year olds.
We are proud to stock such a wide and varied collection of ethical wooden and natural toys for toddlers and pre-schoolers from the very best sustainable toy brands. But as a parent the choice can be a little overwhelming, so we’ve narrowed it down to some of our favourites.
You’ll find some tried and tested toys that kids and eco-parents love and discover some new brands that have arrived on the Babipur shelves this year. So, whether you’re an avid wooden toy collector, or simply trying to navigate the world of eco-friendly Montessori toys this Christmas then this blog post is for you! Here you’ll find our top gifts for 4 and 5 year olds Christmas toy recommendations this year.
Christmas Gift Ideas for 4-5 Year Olds
We’ve split our Christmas gift guides into age groups to make shopping easier for you. You’ll never find our toy split into Girls Toys or Boys Toys. We strongly believe that toys are for everyone and aren’t defined by gender. We’ve been awarded the Let Toys Be Toys Toymark Award for eight consecutive years. This recognises good practice within the toy industry, specifically awarded to retailers and toy manufacturers providing a welcoming and inclusive space for all children.
The Best Natural Toys For Early Years
At this age preschoolers are honing their gross motor skills and have high activity levels! They will be much more independent and starting to interact a lot more with children of a similar age. Speech and language will be developing rapidly, and role play toys are perfect for little ones to practice conversation. Singing and music is also a wonderful way to support developing language, and musical instruments are always a favourite!
Four and five year olds will be exploring imaginary play, and delighting in small world play with wooden figures. Toy garages, road systems and dolls houses by Plan Toys are great for friends and siblings to play together, developing social skills needed for starting school. Their building skills will be more developed now, so will love the more challenging building sets including Kapla and Walachia.
We’ve selected some of our all-time favourite natural toys for 4-5 year olds. Bringing together toys recommended by our Babipur Hangout community, customer favourites and our bestselling children’s toys this year. Choosing a natural toy for a child for Christmas is a lovely way to introduce children and parents to the wonderful world of wooden toys. Without further ado, let’s take a look at what makes our Christmas list for 4-5 year olds this year.
The Best Eco-Friendly Toys for 4-5 year olds this Christmas
Plan Musical Instruments
Plan Toys musical instruments are brilliant children sized instruments to inspire little ones to play and enjoy music. They will learn which actions make which noises with these fantastic wooden toy instruments. Perfect for playing alone or joining other siblings and friends in a band! Ethically made from sustainable rubber wood, these musical toys are sure to be a bit hit with pre-schoolers.
One of our favourite kids instrument has to be the Plan Toys rhythm box. Little children love to sit on it and tap out a beat. This is such a great way to support developing speech and language, by singing, clapping or dancing along to the rhythm!
Plan Toys Mini Range
Super cute and portable, the Plan Toys mini range include some of our favourite scaled down toys. From tiny puzzles and block sets, to stacking and balancing games and dominos.
These mini toy sets are ideal for developing hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and concentration. These little wooden toys make perfect stocking fillers and travel toys, they’ll be brought out again and again.
Plan Toys Boat Bath Toys
Make bath time fun with Plan Toys water play toys! We love the range of cute bath boats with little characters. These will float on calm waters, but look out in stormy seas as they will sink to the bottom, just like the real thing!
Of course, these toys are also great fun to play with on dry land, or in a tuff-tray play set up. Sustainably made from PlanWood, a by-product of the rubber industry, these top quality bath toys make a great stocking filler which will bring years of enjoyment.
Plan Toys Road System
The Plan Toys PlanWorld range is a favourite here at Babipur. We love the little cars, they zoom across hard floors and they’re wonderfully scaled for little hands. The Plan Toys PlanWorld range features large structures such as the garage and airport, there’s lots of road and rail to expand your city as well as an array of vehicles, smaller stations and characters. Turn your playroom into one great big eco city network!
The Plan Toys Road System is an updated classic, which can be linked up with the Plan Toys parking garage and the road and rail networks for exciting small world play. With junctions, bridges and bends there are plenty of play opportunities with siblings and friends. Sustainably made from solid rubberwood, reclaimed from the rubber industry, Plan Toys lead the way in ethical toy manufacture and are built to last.
Olli Ella Luggy
One of the best loved items in the Olli Ella range, the Luggy is a timeless classic that’s loved by pre-school aged children for wheeling their belongings about. Beautiful as well as practical, the Luggy comes in different sizes for older children, adults and matching wheeled baskets for Dinkum Dolls too. These are great for pretend play and for children exploring the transporting schema – an interest in moving themselves or objects from one place to another.
The Luggy wheeled basket is a beautiful rattan basket in a range of colours with a white handle and two recycled plastic wheels. It’s perfect for trips to the park, beach or shopping. When not in play it will look great in the playroom and is perfect for storing toys or books.
Plan Toys Role Play Sets
Role play is such an important form of play for young children. It stimulates creativity and imagination, allowing children to express themselves in pretend play, supporting emotional development and language and communication skills.
Plan Toys make a fantastic range of toys for pretend play, from kitchen and food sets to pet care, dentist, make-up, detective and firefighters sets. There’s a role play set for everyone!
Our top selling role play set has to be one of the first Plan Toys role play toys, the Doctors set. One of our best toys for 4-5 year olds, they’ll love taking care of you, siblings or dolls with this fab doctors set from Plan Toys. With 5 medical instruments, a blood pressure monitor, stethoscope, reflex hammer, syringe and thermometer all contained in a red doctors bag. Perfect for imaginative play and teaching empathy and sympathy. This is a great set for preparing young children for visiting the doctors, easing the anxiety of a new experience.
Erzi Play Food
Erzi play food is so much fun! With lots of different sets to choose from there’s plenty of options for stocking your play kitchen cupboard, market stall or café. These wooden play food pieces are tiny replicas of the real thing, beautifully realistic and great value too.
Skillfully made in Germany using FSC wood this play food is durable and lifelike. It will spark creativity and pretend play which plays such a huge part of all early years learning.
Plan Toys Slide N Go Dollshouse
A dolls house makes a wonderful ‘big’ present for 4-5 year olds. The Slide N Go Dolls House from Plan Toys is a favourite here at Babipur. This clever and compact design can be easily taken from room to room or even outside to set up and play where your child wants. With a minimalist, Scandi style, there’s lots of options to customise the living spaces. It’s a great size for siblings or friends to play together and comes complete with furniture.
Plan Toys dolls houses are sustainably made from reclaimed rubberwood and extremely durable. These heirloom pieces will be played with over and over again by generations of children.
Mader Spinning Top Learning Set
Mader are the masters of spinning top design, skilfully crafted from a single piece of wood in Austria. Each spinning top undergoes up to 20 different processes, all by hand.
With a range of difficulties to choose from there is something for children (and adults) of all ages. The Spinning Top Learning Set includes a range of different tops of different difficulties for your 4-5 year old to master.
These come in a range of beautiful shades and the rallyes are the easiest for little hands to master, and the thunderbolt very tricky. Perfect for developing fine motor skills and concentration, there’s a real sense of achievement as you master each top. Prepare to be mesmerised by these enchanting toys!
Grimm’s Large Building Rollers
We had to include some Grimm’s wooden toys in our best toys for 4-5 year olds guide! Grimm’s Rainbow Rollers are wonderfully tactile and versatile construction pieces that stack up to create towers. Roll them across the floor and use them in counting games to help visualise fractions.
This set of rollers is a great open-ended wooden toy that’ll inspire creative play. Combine with other building blocks and wooden peg people. Build a town, a fairy-tale castle or create patterns, shapes and landscapes. Children will love to learn, play and build with these beautiful cylindrical blocks. Ethically made with sustainably sourced lime wood and stained with water-based colour, allowing the natural grain of the wood to shine through.
Grimm’s Counter Rotating Stepped Spiral
This incredible spiral 3D puzzle will bring hours of open-ended play enjoyment. Build your own spiral staircases and curved, stepped buildings with this incredible stair block set from Grimm’s. The Counter Rotating Spiral is a large and impressive block set which will add an extra dimension to your child’s builds, supporting creativity and problem solving.
Combine with other play blocks and toys to make steps that spiral around towers and cityscapes, or your own beautifully curved structures. Mix with Grimm’s building blocks – such as the Geo Blocks or 1001 Nights – for a fantasy rainbow-coloured world that’ll be traversed at will.
Grapat Lola
The Grapat Lola set contains 72 wooden pieces painted in 12 different colours of the rainbow. With a mixture of cylindrical playing parts, little characters (Lola) with eyes in various heights, tubes, solid cylinders and half tubes. The Lola pieces slot inside the colourful tubes and half tubes.
This impressive Grapat set offers endless play opportunities. From colour matching, stacking, counting, fractions, construction, small world play and so much more. Create stacks as high as you dare or hide Lola pieces inside the tubes. The Lola pieces come to life with their little tiny eyes peeping out in all directions. The Lola set will inspire many years of fun.
Grapat Nest Rings
Another entry from heuristic wooden toy makers Grapat, the Nest Rings add a new dimension to children’s play and discovery. The rings fit within each other and gradually get lighter in shade as the rings get smaller. This is great for colour matching, grouping and as a visual mathematical aid.
Cleanly cut with precision so they stack perfectly and roll across surfaces with gusto. Logical thinking and practical physics are discovered through experimental play. The Grapat nesting rings also make a wonderful creative tool for making scenes, patterns, drawing around or mandala making. Practice hand-eye coordination by balancing and stacking.
Babai Dolls House
Babai is a new brand on the Babipur shelves this year. Made in the Ukraine using locally sourced, sustainable FSC wood. We love the aesthetic design of these toys and children’s furniture range. The dolls houses by Babai Toys have a compact and clever flat-pack design. The natural wood finished walls and a painted roof, held together by magnets. This modern contemporary toy dolls house will hold your child’s favourite dolls or peg people. Set it up anywhere, ready for play.
With its simple stylish Scandinavian design with large windows and skylights, Babai dolls houses can be customised by your child by painting or left it with a beautiful natural wood and painted finish. The 9 frame and wall sections hold together using magnets and can pack down flat when not in use. This contemporary dolls house is loved by children of all ages for imaginative play and looks equally beautiful on the playroom shelf.
Walachia Vario Large Building Set
Bring creative building and imaginative play to life with sustainable Walachia Vario STEM building sets! Walachia are another new brand to Babipur and we love these open-ended Vario building sets. They’re made up of a series of mini wooden logs which lock together with their half-round cut-outs. The wooden windows and doors which are cleverly designed to slot over the logs. Children will love exploring the different building variations and constructing their own designs.
This open-ended building set is an ideal introduction to the Walachia Vario construction toys. They’re a great addition to your Montessori and Waldorf learning resources, and home education STEM learning. This wooden house building set will inspire creative thinking, problem solving and develop fine motor skills. Made from locally sourced sustainable beech and pine from the Czech Republic. The Vario 91 piece building set is compatible with other Vario sets to extend your self-build designs further! Great for your small world play set-ups. Add wooden animals, peg people and trees to make a wonderful alpine invitation to play.
Kapla 200 Box
It was very exciting to launch Kapla at Babipur this year! A much loved and world renowned wooden building block brand for creating incredible structures. The Kapla 200 box had to make our best toys for 4-5 year olds list! Designed to inspire creativity and ingenuity, the Kapla 200 piece wooden plank box is the ideal introduction to the wonderful world of Kapla building. This set includes an ideas manual to inspire budding architects.
Made from smooth, 100% untreated pine wood from natural pine forests in Les Landes in the South-West of France. Kapla planks are precision and identical in size. Thanks to their clever sizing ratio, you can build complex and surprisingly stable structures – let your imagination go wild!
So many of our favourites on here! With a just turned 4yr old I can confirm these as great choices. The Dr set is a definite favourite here and some of the other role play sets have been requested this year.